Monkey Off My Back

I finally got a big monkey off my back--an article that it feels like I've been working on since forever. I haven't been working on it much or very long at all, in fact, in terms of actual hours, but it has dragged out for a year since it was solicited for the volume that it's going in, so it has been hanging over my head for a long time, even though I haven't had much time to work on it.

This article was also my job talk at my campus visit. What's weird about it is that it's my only piece of research that is well and truly in my field. It's my most Renaissance-y piece, and it also falls into an interdisciplinary sub-field that was part of my new job description, so it fit my job perfectly for the job talk, but now that it's done, I'm not working on anything that truly fits my new job. In fact, just the fact that I'm publishing this piece makes me feel like a bit of a fraud since I don't feel like I know enough about the period, simply because I'm not one of those new historicist Shakespeareans, and it feels weird to think that this is what my job is and what my new identity as a prof is supposed to be.

Weird and fraudulent or not, I'm still really glad the article is done! Now it's back to editing my book proposal to send out again, and hoping for better luck than I got last time when the publisher stopped publishing. This time I'm sending it to the publisher I talked to at MLA who expressed definite interest, so fingers are crossed for a positive reply.